Cameras and Photography Explained

Nikon's upcoming mirrorless camera is rumored to be a 2.7x crop (m4/3 is 2x, DX is 1.5x, FX is 1x). Do I believe that rumor? Basically. I'm not sure if the exact final measurement is 2.6x or 2.7x or 2.8x, but I'm pretty sure it's in that range. Yet I'm seeing a lot of people just dismiss that notion out of hand. I think everyone needs to think a bit more about how products differentiate themselves in the photography scene.

Let's step back for a moment. In the film world we long had 35mm and 120/220 sizes. 35mm was 36mm across, and the larger file size when used as 645 was 56mm across. You might notice that this is about 1.5x difference across the long axis. Eventually we got a new film type called APS, which had aabout a 1.5x difference across the long axis, but in the opposite direction. Does that 1.5x number sound familiar?

Small differences in imaging size don't produce a lot of tangible difference. In the digital world, we have DX, APS-C, and Foveon, which range from 1.5x to 1.7x. While even the small difference between 1.5 to 1.7 makes for some annoying reduction of angle of view at the very wide end, tangibly there isn't a lot of difference in terms of the number of photons hitting the sensor. (1.5x often turns out to be 1.55x, and 1.6x turns out to be 1.62x, etc., but that just reinforces the point.) The equivalent Nikon (DX), Canon (APS-C) and Sigma (Foveon 1.7x) cameras are basically dealing with the same light capture (and you can make that even more even by just using the same Sigma lens on each, thus cancelling out any lens differences). In theory, sensor differences between such cameras is a lot like film differences were back in the 35mm days. Yes, one or another may be slightly more efficient, or have more layers, or have some other slight difference, but you'd expect such cameras to have similar capabilities.

Likewise, there are no real advantages in system physical size with 1.5x versus 1.6x versus 1.7x. You're not going to make tangibly smaller and lighter cameras and lenses with that small of a physical capture difference. So again, things start to look about the same.

So how much change does it take to make a real difference that gets noticed? The number 1.4 is meaningful in photography in so many ways. Turns out, that something around that number makes a lot of sense for capture size change, too. Each 1.4x change doubles the area of light captured. Hmm, that sounds an awful like a "stop." (It isn't always, exactly; but in practice, all else equal, we see stop-like differences between such systems.) So if we were to make cameras about a stop apart, what would we get: a progression close to MF, FX, DX, m4/3, and whatever Nikon calls their 2.7x product. (Please don't send me detailed calculations telling me that .92 is not close to 1; my point is not that we have exact formats that are 1.4x apart, but that it is logical that formats be something near that number apart.)

Let's look at things a different way:

When you look at where the competition is, you start to see some interesting things. Everyone has compacts, so we can discount that group. Canon has tried to own the APS-C to FX sizes. Sony likewise, though they don't have a "tweener" like Canon does. Olympus placed all their bets on Black, uh, I mean 4/3. Pentax went Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Baby Bear. But there's one competitor between Compact and APS. That's a long, long gap. The largest compact sensors are 1/1.7", which is 4.7x. If one stop differences are meaningful to establish a functional format, and I think they are, then we should have something like MF, FX, DX, m4/3, ??, ??, and 1/1.7". Why is it that Leica is the only company so far that seems to be filling out that line?

In theory, you trade light collection for size/convenience in cameras. That was true of film (APS, 35mm, 645) and it's true of digital. The camera companies, as I've noted many times, are playing the same script over and over. Personally, I believe that they should be playing by a different script, but yeah, i'm just an eccentric nobody that knows nothing about how tech works.

So about that difference, what does it mean for signal to noise ratio? Inverted, it looks like this:

FX = 1
DX/APS-C = 1.53
m4/3 = 1.96
new Nikon = 2.72
1/1/8" compact = 4.76
(BSI and a few other factors can change those numbers a bit, but not enough to distort them 1.4x ;~)

So where is Nikon targeting their new format? Somewhere almost exactly midway between DX and Coolpix, it seems. That sounds entirely logical to me, as long as they get the camera/lens size right, too. I'm not sure that it needed to have interchangeable lenses, as the audience that's likely to be interested in such small cameras is likely to buy less than two lenses total. But, then again, with margins being what they are, selling 1.4x of something is better than selling 1, especially if the margins on the .4x are higher ;~).

The problem for me is that Nikon isn't really seeing physically smaller than the current DX DSLRs as anything serious. The high-end Coolpix offerings are, well, lackluster in comparison to competitive products. We continue to get gimmicks and almost-but-not-quites in the Coolpix designs, and I don't think this new format is going to be any different. How much do you want to bet that Nikon is targeting the same market Panasonic and Olympus are targeting with the GF3 and E-PM1, respectively?

As a truly serious brand, one that delivers what Nikon made its reputation on, I'd argue that we're now down to the D5100, D7000, D300s, D700, D3s, and D3x. Not a bad spread, but other than the D5100 there's an issue of too much size/weight; and except for the D700, D3s, and D3x, there's serious lens neglect. Of the 20 million widgets Nikon made in the last year, I'm betting that less than 2 million represent products that the brand reputation is based on.

But the 2.7x number is a different issue. Could Nikon build a wickedly innovative and top end "compact" with that format? You bet they could. Will they? That's the question everyone is dreading the answer to. A Coolpix P300 on steroids isn't a product that most of you reading this Web site would be interested in, is it?

My point, however, is that all this discussion that a 2.7x size choice is irrational is incorrect, IMHO. Having three very different choices with clearly different and increasing performance at each size is on its face a rational decision. If Nikon can deliver a stop+ better performance than the best compact camera but keep the overall size close, that represents a gain to photographers. We'll get another useful arrow in our quiver. That's why I'm more worried about Nikon's target customer. If it's truly the casual photographer, said arrow comes to us broken.